[21] Teichmann went on to study the Natural Sciences Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge and was awarded a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in 1996.

From 2001-2012, she was a Medical Research Council (MRC) Programme Leader, studying patterns in protein interactions and transcriptional regulatory networks.

Since 2016 Teichmann has served as the head of Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute[15] and a visiting research group leader at the EBI.

[8] Teichmann's research[26][27][28][29] investigates gene expression[30][31][32] and protein complex assembly[33] using both wet laboratory and computational biology techniques.

[21] As of 2015[update] Teichmann has supervised several PhD students to completion[37][21] including Madan Babu,[10] Varodom Charoensawan[38] Subhajyoti De[39] Jay Han,[40] Sarah Kay Kummerfeld[41][42] Tina Perica,[43] and Jing Su,[44] and several postdoctoral researchers who have gone on to become Principal investigators (PIs).

Her citation on election reads: Sarah Teichmann is Research Group Leader at EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and has made major contributions to biology over the past 15 years.

[6] In 2020, Teichmann was recognised on The Times 'Science Power List' for her work on the Human Cell Atlas[53] and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.